Finney has fashioned himself into a sometimes quirky populist, frequently surveying residents, and became the first Tennessee legislator to catalog his votes online while breaking from Republican orthodoxy by introducing a bill to ban mountaintop-removal mining that irked big-business types.
[..]
Overbey infuriated conservatives when he voted to re-elect Democrat Jimmy Naifeh as speaker of the House last year. He defended the vote as a show of bipartisanship, since Republicans didn't have the votes to oust Naifeh.
No Democrats are running in the primary, so this seat is probably safe for the Rs (there is one independent running, plus a third Republican.)
Many locals see this race as the local GOP establishment (Overbey) v. a loose cannon (Finney). Finney is even picking up support among some Democrats for his support of the ban on mountaintop removal mining.
Other than Tuke v. Padgett, there aren't really any competitive races in the Blount Co. state Democratic primary so there could be some crossover voting. A recent online poll by the local paper has Finney with 54.8% v. Overbey 44.2%, with 20+ times more online votes than usual for the newspaper's polls.
Overbey gave up his seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives District 20 to run for Senate and no Democrats applied, so that one is safe for Rs, too.
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 08/01/2008 - 15:05.
I'm glad to hear that our leaders are standing up at the state level to denounce the destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining.
I also wanted to thank you for spreading the word about it with this post. Its posts like these that have made a HUGE impact on the campaign! If you ever need more resources about mountaintop removal coal mining, feel free to contact me.
If you havent already, please consider joining the iLoveMountains.org Bloggers Challenge and adding a WIDGET to your blog. To date, 460 bloggers have take the challenge! http://www.iLoveMountains.org/bloggers-challenge
I'm glad to hear that our leaders are standing up at the state level to denounce the destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining.
I also wanted to thank you for spreading the word about it with this post. Its posts like these that have made a HUGE impact on the campaign! If you ever need more resources about mountaintop removal coal mining, feel free to contact me.
If you havent already, please consider joining the iLoveMountains.org Bloggers Challenge and adding a WIDGET to your blog. To date, 460 bloggers have take the challenge!
http://www.iLoveMountains.org/bloggers-challenge
- - - Benji@iLoveMountains.org